Eating from the back yard
May. 19th, 2012 09:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marinessI just ate half a passion fruit from the yard this morning.
The first taste was -- sharp, unexpected, overly sour. (It does not go well with coffee with coconut syrup. I have learned.) But I took another bite, and another, and found that the taste really grows on you.
Along with the passion fruit, we've successfully harvested blueberries (we have one happy bush and one less happy bush, enough in theory to pollinate each other, though we may need to pick up a third blueberry bush) and three raspberries (not bushes; actual raspberries. The squirrels didn't go for the blueberries but they apparently think that raspberries are crack, and the canes did not exactly produce many to begin with). We've also planted a grapefruit tree that's alive, if not exactly grapefruiting, added a lemon tree and two orange trees, a banana tree, and muscatine grape vines (these are the grapes native to Florida). In the front, next to the huge rosemary bush that was here when we arrived, we now have a couple of types of mint (I used some last night), basil, sage, oregano and lavender.
Aside from some of the fruit trees and the rose bushes (roses were already here when we arrived; we've just been trying to add some more bushes to that area so they don't look so bedraggled), and a couple of bougainvilleas near the windows for security (they have long, sharp, thorns), we've mostly been going with native Florida plants out of sheer laziness. I have to say, you put those firebushes in, they go, yay, Florida, and that's about it for the firebushes, one solid reason to go native.
The yard still looks scraggly in places, but you can see where it's going now. And eat things from it.
And yes, let a few squirrels bounce around in it.
The first taste was -- sharp, unexpected, overly sour. (It does not go well with coffee with coconut syrup. I have learned.) But I took another bite, and another, and found that the taste really grows on you.
Along with the passion fruit, we've successfully harvested blueberries (we have one happy bush and one less happy bush, enough in theory to pollinate each other, though we may need to pick up a third blueberry bush) and three raspberries (not bushes; actual raspberries. The squirrels didn't go for the blueberries but they apparently think that raspberries are crack, and the canes did not exactly produce many to begin with). We've also planted a grapefruit tree that's alive, if not exactly grapefruiting, added a lemon tree and two orange trees, a banana tree, and muscatine grape vines (these are the grapes native to Florida). In the front, next to the huge rosemary bush that was here when we arrived, we now have a couple of types of mint (I used some last night), basil, sage, oregano and lavender.
Aside from some of the fruit trees and the rose bushes (roses were already here when we arrived; we've just been trying to add some more bushes to that area so they don't look so bedraggled), and a couple of bougainvilleas near the windows for security (they have long, sharp, thorns), we've mostly been going with native Florida plants out of sheer laziness. I have to say, you put those firebushes in, they go, yay, Florida, and that's about it for the firebushes, one solid reason to go native.
The yard still looks scraggly in places, but you can see where it's going now. And eat things from it.
And yes, let a few squirrels bounce around in it.